Abstract
The discourses that conceive prostitutes as victims are strained by them by through the recurrent affirmation of their autonomies. The research presented here came from immersion in the Bohemian Zone of Guaicurus Street, in the city of Belo Horizonte, and from interviews with eight female prostitutes. We present some psychosocial mechanisms that prevent the access of prostitutes to the established circuit of social recognition, analyzing the association of these mechanisms with experiences of coping and resistance to dynamics of social disqualification. The narratives of the interviewed prostitutes give us clues that their trajectories are built between subjection and resistance to subjection, heteronomy and affirmation of autonomy. The ambiguity of social dynamics allows them to question the destructive effects of subalternity and, as a result, they disseminate in the social fabric other knowledge about their living conditions.
Keywords:
prostitution; autonomie; resistance; gender